Legal News

Report: KSM Lied to Avoid Further Waterboarding; ?I Make Up Stories?

By Chris Herring

The torture debate has been on high-burn for the last few weeks. Now comes news that leads us to believe the gas may stay turned on for a while to come.

A story in today’s LA Times cites documents in which self-described 9-11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told interrogators that he lied to the CIA during interrogations to prevent being waterboarded any further.

The piece, which is sure to ignite more controversy over whether past interrogation methods like waterboarding were effective, will likely put more pressure on President Obama to release more information concerning the tactics employed by the previous administration. The Obama administration has said that it considers waterboarding torture.

The report, obtained by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act request, says Mohammed admitted to lying about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts because he feared more harsh interrogations were coming had he simply told investigators that he didn’t know.

“I make up stories,” Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA concerning the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. “Where is he? I don’t know. Then, he torture me,” Mohammed said of his interrogator. “Then I said, ‘Yes, he is in this area.’ “

The LA Times report confirms a portion of a NYT story from last June that says largely the same thing — that Mohammed was waterboarded more than 100 times and that investigators thought he might be lying to avoid being interrogated any further.

Mohammed and fellow detainee Abu Zubayduh were waterboarded a total of 266 times combined in 2002 and 2003, according to a Justice Department memo that was made public in April.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).